


The Mystery of the Missing Necklace

by maxinia



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 03:05:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9103921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxinia/pseuds/maxinia
Summary: The clock is racing for Agnieszka to prove Sarkan innocent... but can she find enough evidence to rescue him in time?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [birdthatlookslikeastick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdthatlookslikeastick/gifts).



> Modern/detective AU of Uprooted!  
> Sarkan and Agnieszka are roommates, Kasia is a police detective, Agnieszka is a private investigator, and Sarkan and Solya are ambassadors for Queen Hanna!
> 
> //does a mystery plot have to make sense  
> //shhhh it's fine
> 
> Happy holidays!

Agnieszka startled at the knock on her door. She glanced up. “Come in,” she called, shuffling the crime scene photographs on her desk into a folder.

The door opened an inch and Kasia’s head poked through. “Nieshka? I thought I’d stop by during my lunch break. Got a minute?” she asked.

“Of course,” Agnieszka said, smiling.

“Great,” Kasia said, taking a seat across from her. With her hair pulled back into a tight bun and her sergeant’s uniform spotless, she looked calm, collected, and confident as ever. Kasia had a level of professionalism that allowed her to stay cool even when working the most gruesome of crime scenes, and an eye for detail that made her Kralia’s number one detective.

Agnieszka, on the other hand, was just a part-time private investigator. She had good contacts, sure, and she’d solved a few of the city’s gnarlier cases in the past few years, but she sure wasn’t Kasia.

She didn’t really mind it, though. Especially not when the two of them had grown up together in the same little town outside the city, as fast as friends can be. She knew she could rely on Kasia for anything - and Kasia could rely on her, too.

“What’s troubling you?” Agnieszka asked.

Kasia sighed. “You’ve heard about the Queen’s jewels, right?”

Agnieszka raised an eyebrow. “The necklace? Got stolen, what, two, three days ago?”

“That’s the one,” Kasia said. “They caught the guy.”

“Really?” Agnieszka leaned forward. “Who?”  
 “You’re not gonna believe this,” Kasia frowned.

“Who?”

“It’s… your flatmate, Sarkan.”

Agnieszka blinked. “What?”

“I know, I know he’s your friend. But it had to be someone with access to the palace, which he would have, since he works there. More than that, a maid says she saw him exit the Queen’s rooms.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Agnieszka said. “Sarkan’s not a thief.”

“You and I both know that,” Kasia said. “But the Queen’s men and the rest of my force don’t.”

“Yes, but -“ Agnieszka broke off as her telephone began to ring. She raised an eyebrow.

“I can step outside if you’d like,” Kasia said.

She shook her head and picked up the phone.

“Agnieszka speaking, who’s this?”  
 “Agnieszka? It’s Sarkan.” 

Her eyes widened. Kasia caught the movement and mouthed, who is it?

“Sarkan? Are you alright?” Agnieszka asked.

“Well, no, actually. I’ve been arrested for larceny.”

“I heard,” Agnieszka said.

“You’re my one phone call,” he said. “As I hope you would’ve guessed, I did not in fact steal the Queen’s necklace. I need someone to find evidence to prove me innocent.”

“Why don’t you trust the police department, or a lawyer? I’m sure Kasia - “ 

“Kasia’s great at her job, but she’s not you,” he said. “You’ve got… methods, connections. Listen, Agnieszka… I think I’m being framed. I need someone who’s a little unorthodox.”

“…Alright,” Agnieszka said. “Tell me all you remember about the night it was stolen.”

“I was researching, working on some diplomatic papers for an ambassadors’ conference next week. I was alone all night.”

“That’s not helpful,” Agnieszka said.  
 “I know,” Sarkan said. “Which is why I need you.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Stay safe,” she said, hanging up.

“Well?” Kasia asked.

“Sarkan’s asking me to investigate,” she said. “The rent is good, but I didn’t realize rooming with one of the Queen’s ambassadors would be this much trouble.”

Kasia let out a big breath. “Good luck. I’ll help you out as much as I can, but I’m not sure there’s much I can do.”

“Thanks,” Agnieszka said. She stood and started putting on her coat. “I should get started on this, talk to you later?”

“Absolutely,” Kasia said, standing up and heading to the door. “Keep me updated?”

“Will do.” Agnieszka tied her scarf around her neck, checked that she had everything she would need, and followed her out and down the stairwell to street level. She waved as Kasia ducked into her police car and then set off down the street, walking at a brisk pace.

After about twenty minutes, she found herself standing in front of a polished modern building, all glass and stainless steel. She brushed her way past a couple of businesspeople in sharp suits and made her way to the front desk.

“I’m here to see Solya,” she said to the young man there. “Tell him it’s Agnieszka.”

A few minutes later, another secretary stepped out of the elevator and motioned for Agnieszka to follow her upstairs.

She’d forgotten how high this building went; Solya’s office was on the 32nd floor. When the elevator finally reached it, she was shown down the hall and into his office.

It sprawled across what must have been half of this story, with his desk in one section and a set of couches around a coffee table in another. All of it was backlit by a massive expanse of windows. 

Solya lounged on one of the couches. He gestured for Agnieszka to join him.

“I’m assuming our mutual friend’s plight is what brings you here today,” he said.

She nodded. “I imagine you’ve gathered some information on his case already.”

“You’re not wrong,” he said. 

“I’m looking for answers,” she said. 

“The Queen would posit that the answer is ‘Sarkan did it,’” he responded, eyebrow raised.

“My question runs slightly deeper than hers,” she said. “It goes so far as to ask why.”

Solya gave her a pensive look. “You realize the royal family knows everything I know about this situation?”

“Of course,” Agnieszka said. “You’re their master spy, after all.”

“Head ambassador. If they already have it, why do you think it’s of value to you? You’ve seen where this information ends up. Sarkan, in a prison cell.”

“I see where they’ve pointed it. Not where it actually leads.”

“Sharp words, young lady,” Solya warned.

Agnieszka held his gaze for a moment. “Sarkan’s my friend.”

“I thought he was mine, too,” Solya said. “And yet…”

“He still might be. Let me investigate, and I’ll prove well enough for both of us whether Sarkan’s the culprit.”

He sighed. “If it’ll stop you poking around here, fine. What would you like to know?”

“Where is the necklace now? Has it been on the market at all?”

“As far as I know, no one in the city has seen or heard a whisper of it,” he said. “Which, quite frankly, surprised me as well.”

“Is it possible the thief is just waiting for the furor to die down over it? Or that they already had a buyer in mind?”

“Possible, yes. But without me hearing of it? Unlikely.”

“So you’ve no leads in the market?”

“None.”

Agnieszka frowned. “That’s… interesting. Thank you for your time.”

“I’ll be seeing you around, I presume,” Solya said.

She nodded and stood. “See you.” She made her way back to the elevator and out onto the street.

Solya had an ear tapped into every niche of the city’s markets, if not the whole nation’s economy. That was his job, after all. If he hadn’t heard of something as notable as the Queen’s necklace on sale, it wasn’t on sale.

Unless he was lying.

She would just have to trust that he wasn’t, and if this led nowhere, she could go back and try again on a different angle.

But for now, she knew where the path led. And she didn’t like it one bit.

She glanced at her watch. It was just past 2 in the afternoon now; Kasia’s lunch break always fell on the early side. Theoretically, the queen’s rooms would still be a crime scene. They wouldn’t let anyone touch it for at least 48 hours, not even Queen Hanna herself. And if not, she’d hopefully be busy doing whatever it was the queen had to do, elsewhere.

Sure, she could go interrogate some of the other spymasters - Alosha, if anyone, could spot a lead Solya missed - but the quickest, most surefire way to get a grip on the situation would be to investigate the crime scene itself.

She hailed a cab and headed to the palace.

Getting into the palace was surprisingly easy. She flashed her private investigator’s license at the front gate and was shown in with no further questions asked. Apparently the security had gotten used to officers and detectives waltzing in over the past two days.

Getting to the queen’s rooms, however, was a whole different story. It wasn’t long before she could spot the first floor entrance to the queen’s wing, guarded by two low-ranking officers who were trying and failing to look smart. She didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting past them. Without legitimate access to the scene, the risk of being turned away for good was too high. Kasia thought fondly of Agnieszka, but that didn’t mean the rest of the department did.

So instead of the direct route, Agnieszka casually strolled past the guards and around the hall until she was out of sight. She spotted a staircase to another wing of the palace and followed it to the second floor. After pausing for a moment to think, she headed to the third floor and then back around to approximately where the guards had been.

There it was - another set of doors to the queen’s rooms. She tried the handle, and thanking all the good luck she’d managed to accrue over the years, found it unlocked.

Up here, the hallway was decidedly narrower than she had expected for the queen’s personal quarters. It was plain and unpainted, too - completely undecorated. She peered in an open doorway and spotted what looked like a laundry room, with beautiful formal gowns hung up to dry. Ah, the servant’s quarters - that’s why it looked so normal. There might be servants working during the day here, but she felt confident she could brush them off with her investigator’s license.

She continued down the hall until she came to a small staircase. At the bottom, she opened a narrow door and found herself in a hallway parallel to the one two floors up, but much more extravagant. The wall was painted a deep maroon with mahogany chair rail moulding over a soft, plushy carpet. Gold-leafed lamps cast a warm glow over the whole space. This was a hall fit for a queen. 

Agneiszka turned away from the door she knew the two guards would be standing in front of and walked until she found a set of double doors, conveniently marked with bright yellow crime scene tape. She listened for a second, checking that no one was inside, and then slipped in.

Queen Hanna’s rooms were a complete disaster. Velvet clothes and golden jewelry had been strewn across the floor, haphazardly piled against the walls, and even shredded in some places. The wooden floor creaked beneath her feet as she crept around, taking in the disarray. Something smelled off… Looking closer, she saw that some of the clothes were singed. 

Was that why they’d blamed Sarkan? Crime + fire = Dragon?

It made no sense that Sarkan would make a mess like this. Whoever had been through here had been looking for something specific, and in quite a hurry. But what? Sure, the Queen’s jewelry had ended up everywhere, but it looked like someone had emptied and took a knife to the contents of her dresser as well. And her pillows? Why would someone look there for a necklace?

It seemed more like someone had been trying to make a very expensive mess than anything else. And with this much of a mess, how did Queen Hanna know that her necklace had even been stolen?

She nudged a pile of clothes with her foot. It wobbled for a moment, on the verge of avalanche. A few earrings tumbled down the pile and across her foot. One particularly shiny piece ricocheted away and across the floor, eventually coming to rest on a massive knot in the wood of the floor.

Except it didn’t come to rest - it fell straight through.

Agnieszka frowned and knelt over the hole. She poked a finger through, encountering nothing - just a large, empty space. A secret compartment? She hooked her finger on the edge of the hole and pulled.

The entire floorboard popped out, revealing a hidden cache. At the bottom, she could see the glint of something gold and blue. Hurriedly, she pulled out her flashlight and shone it down.  
There it was - the supposedly ‘missing’ necklace. Not missing at all. It’d been purposely hidden here. And if that was the case - the whole room had been purposely torn apart. All of this was a setup, with the apparent intent of getting rid of Sarkan.

But it was a very poorly done setup. Within a few hours, she’d been able to find evidence completely unravelling the whole thing. All she had to do now was slyly suggest to Kasia where to search and all charges would be dropped. The queen should have been able to come up with something much better than this if she wanted to actually take down Sarkan. No, this was a warning shot; Queen Hanna could no longer be trusted.

They’d have to watch out, from now on. But whatever the Queen had in mind, Agnieszka was sure the three of them together could handle it.


End file.
